Recently, as a technology for a network and various user terminals is developed, a demand for a multi-screen service is rapidly increasing. A user can receive a service for a single content by moving one user terminal to another user terminal through the multi-screen service.
In particular, a computer game service is being developed into an on-line game or server-end type game service in which a user can play a game with other users through a home network or an internet network, escaping from a conventional game service in which a user plays a game independently in a personal computer (PC). Such a game service in the home is being provided with a further advanced function through a game-dedicated console. The game-dedicated console can recognize movement of a user using a stereo camera in a home network.
However, a multi-screen service based game service, which has been provided on a home network using the existing game-dedicated console, is not provided yet at a user terminal.
In addition, an approaching method for the conventional multi-screen service transcodes one media according to a resolution of a user terminal and provides the transcoded media. As a result, both decoding and encoding should be performed on an original media.
Herein, the transcoding is a process of converting a media having a certain resolution and media property into a media having a different resolution and media property. The transcoding includes a decoding process for an original media and an encoding process for a decoded media to generate a target media to be converted. The transcoding requires various processing methods and speeds according to the original media to be converted, so that it is difficult to satisfy a response time of a game service.
Therefore, in a game service in which a plurality of users plays a game in a single shared space, it takes a long time to process a media according to properties of a user terminal, such as a resolution. One of fundamental reasons causing this problem is obtained by applying a conventional scheme that renders a game in the same manner and transcodes the rendered game without obtaining resolution information of the user terminal in advance.
When serving moving picture contents of a movie using the conventional multi-screen service, one original media should be transcoded according to user terminal information and then provided to a user. Since, however, a game is a real-time media whose scenes change according to game inputs of a user, game scenes are newly rendered according to the game inputs of the user and then provided to the user. Thus, it is different from a case of using a media, such as movie contents, which is prepared in advance. Traditionally, this game scene rendering is performed using a game engine or a game application software. Therefore, it is not effective to use the conventional scheme to provide a media to a small number of terminals existing in a home network, in aspects of a processing time and computing resource utilization.
Therefore, in case of playing a three-dimensional shared game through terminals in a home network, a multi-view rendering is more effective to reduce a processing time and to improve computing resource utilization. In the multi-view rendering, after information on shared scenes is loaded on a server in advance, the server receives game inputs and view information of each user are processes the received information.
There is a need to combine a multi-screen service using a home server with user terminal information and game input information. Meanwhile, recently, a technology of processing various types of software services in a server is being activated on the strength of the development of a cloud computing related system and service technology. As a result, there is a demand of introducing a service scheme in which a home server processes encoding/streaming and rendering of game scenes, which require a lot of arithmetic operations, using the server-end computing technology, and the user terminal in the home network decodes and displays the game scenes.